Registrar, The University of Nottingham

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Inspired by an original idea and initial outline by @plashingvole here is your climate change league table. It’s a ranking of selected UK universities by their height above sea level. What this tells us is that many institutions are sitting pretty on high ground and will remain standing proud as rising sea levels begin to take their toll.

There are others though, and I’m sure we would we all be keen to see their risk registers, which are looking in a rather precarious position as the waves start to roll in.

So, where are the driest universities of the future?

Rank

Institution

Metres above sea level

1

Keele

186

2

Bath

183

3

Birmingham

140

4

Edinburgh

93

5

Exeter

92

6

Brighton

90

7

Warwick

86

8=

Leeds

82

8=

Durham

82

10

Bristol

77

11

Surrey

66

12=

Oxford

63

12=

Lancaster

63

14

Loughborough

50

15

Nottingham

45

16

Glasgow

38

17

St Andrews

24

18=

UEA

21

18=

LSE

21

20

Cumbria

20

21

York

15

22

Swansea

13

23=

Imperial College

12

23=

Cambridge

12

25

Southampton Solent

8.69

26

Portsmouth

6.71

27

Suffolk

4.32

28

Hull

1.89

Meanwhile, in a nascent international ranking there are several universities which really do operate in a highly rarefied atmosphere:

However, there are two universities in the Netherlands which are in a much riskier position:

The University of Amsterdam is only 78cm above sea level. Scary.

And, in an even more precarious situation, we have Delft University which is, in fact, 48cm *below* sea level. There are a number of other areas around the world below sea level, from the Cambridgeshire Fens to Baku, and some Pacific and Indian Ocean islands which are very close to going below the waterline but I’ve yet to find any universities others than Delft which are actually below sea level.

Some food for thought for future job applications or institutional partnerships there.

“I really must question the validity and methodology of this league table…”
“You’re in the top 5”
“Oh, well I never doubted it for a moment. When will it be incorporated into the TEF metrics and THE world rankings?”

Hmm, being a low-lander originally I moved from near-the-sea-Kent to on-the-hill-Bath until it dawned on me that a place with that name might still mean wet feet. Went to Warwick thinking ‘it’s about as far from any sea side as I can get’…. and now you tell me I’ve moved closer to sea level again!